Dark Hollow: A Novel

AUTHOR INTRODUCTION

As a mystery writer, I’m frequently asked if I’ve based any of my novels on real cases or if I’m inspired by the crime stories that I read in newspapers. The answer, by and large, is no: apart from the risks inherent in touching upon actual events, and the moral questions raised by exploiting someone’s misery for commercial gain, I’ve found that my imagination is quite capable of supplying all of the raw material necessary for a novel. Oh, occasionally I’ll come across an interesting detail in a real life investigation that finds its way into a book, or a court report may spark a line of thought that results in a story line so far removed from the original source material as to be entirely unrecognizable to all concerned, but I don’t think that’s the same as allowing an actual crime—or one of recent vintage, at least, where some of those affected by it may still be alive—to form the basis of a piece of fiction. Then again, I could be fooling myself. Making things up for a living is far from an exact science.

Dark Hollow is something of an exception to all that I’ve written above, because the book is haunted by an actual crime, in this case the first murder that I ever covered as a reporter. When I worked for the Irish Times in Dublin, murders were generally the preserve of the paper’s crime correspondents, or whichever senior reporter happened to be on duty when the information reached us about the discovery of a body. I, being a new recruit, rarely got to report on anything very interesting at all. I was paying my dues in the trenches of the mundane, in the hope that my turn at something slightly more attention grabbing might come eventually.

But there is one time of year when newspapers operate with a skeleton staff, and that’s immediately after Christmas. Nobody really wants to work in a newspaper during the Christmas lull, because not a great deal happens. During the Troubles—as the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that claimed thirty-five hundred lives was termed, with the kind of understatement that Irish people only reserve for the most serious of events (we called World War II the Emergency)—even the terrorists would announce a temporary cease fire so that they could enjoy Christmas dinner untroubled by the requirement to go out and murder some unfortunate Catholic or Protestant.

Thus it was that on December 29, 1996, I happened to be one of a handful of journalists and subeditors preparing the Irish Times for publication, and so desperate were we for news items that I have a vague memory of inputting the entire text of the Archbishop of Dublin’s Christmas message to the diocese in order to fill some space. Just before clocking off for the evening, I made my final calls to the Garda Press Office and Dublin Fire Brigade. As the Evening Town reporter—the shift that covered early afternoon to night was so termed—I had the job of telephoning the police, or Garda Síochána as they are known in Ireland, and fire departments to find out if anything noteworthy had occurred, because they did not tend to proactively inform us of events of interest. In fact, the offices of the Irish Times could themselves have been on fire, and Dublin Fire Brigade wouldn’t have called us to let us know. We wouldn’t have found out until our shoes started melting.

Anyway, expecting to be told by the Garda press officer on duty that the night was just as quiet as the day had been, I was instead notified that the body of a young woman had been found in an apartment on the north side of the city, not far from the paper’s offices. The woman had head injuries, so the Garda were treating it as a suspicious death. And since there was no one else free to cover the incident due to the season, the story was assigned to me.

It was a miserable night, damp with drizzle, and I was one of only two reporters waiting outside the apartment for the senior detective to give us some idea of what had happened. In the meantime, I did all of the things that give reporters a bad name, but which are necessary in the course of these events. I asked the security guard at the nearest convenience store what he knew, which was nothing. I stopped people entering and leaving the apartment block to find out what they could tell me of the dead woman, which wasn’t much. Mostly, I just stood around getting wet, but I didn’t care. Graham Greene once said that there is a splinter of ice in the heart of every writer, and that’s as true of journalists as it is of novelists, especially journalists who know they are covering a story destined to feature above the fold on the front page of the following day’s paper—which, in those less-violent times, murders inevitably did.

Eventually a detective came out to talk to us. I can still remember how shaken he looked. I wonder now if he was a father, or a husband. He probably was, given his age, and I don’t think that he could have looked on the body of the woman in the apartment behind us and not thought, however briefly, of his own wife or daughter. He told us that the victim was not an Irish national. A preliminary identification had been made based on a passport found in her rooms, but he couldn’t definitively say that it was her passport because she had been so badly beaten. We didn’t get much more than that from him, so I returned to the newspaper, wrote up my report, and went home. Terrible though it is to admit, even all these years later, I felt the reporter’s sense of excitement and satisfaction at knowing that I’d been responsible for writing the big story for the front page.

As it turned out, I ended up sharing the byline, because the night reporter was on duty when the victim’s identity was released to the press in the small hours and he added in that detail. The woman’s name was Belinda Pereira, born in London to Sri Lankan parents, and she was twenty-six years old.

The public response to her death was, unsurprisingly, one of shock and revulsion. Ireland was still a relatively peaceful society, the terrorist elephant in the corner of the room excepted, and the murder of a young woman, especially at Christmas, struck a particular chord. There was the sense that the person or persons responsible for Belinda Pereira’s death should be found and punished as a matter of urgency.

A day or two later, it emerged that Belinda had come to Dublin to work as a prostitute over the Christmas holidays and was scheduled to return to London on New Year’s Day. Her parents knew nothing of that part of her life. With the release of this information, the public attitude toward Belinda changed, or so I felt. Her murder was no longer as awful as it once had seemed because she was not an innocent young woman. Her work as a prostitute came to define her—one tabloid newspaper began routinely to refer to her as the Sri Lankan hooker, Belinda Pereira—and, in some bleak, appalling way, it seemed to make her complicit in her own murder. She was deemed to be less morally scrupulous than the norm because of her lifestyle, and since she was likely to be in contact with men who had, in turn, fewer moral scruples, it should not have come as a complete surprise to her when some harm eventually befell her.

Perhaps it was because it was the first murder I had covered—giving me an unwarranted sense of ownership of the story—and because Belinda was so young, but I found myself hugely troubled by the new tone of the public discourse surrounding her murder. I believed that there was nothing this woman could have done to bring such a brutal death upon herself—that, in fact, there was nothing many of us could do to merit such an end to our lives. By that time, I was already working on what would become my first novel, Every Dead Thing, and my feelings about the Belinda Pereira case began to influence my work. It became more about the importance of empathy and the necessity of acting on behalf of the vulnerable and the abused because to do otherwise is to be complicit in their sufferings.

I started work on Dark Hollow in 1997, immediately after delivering a final draft of Every Dead Thing to my agent. At that point I didn’t have a publisher for Every Dead Thing, but my agent, Darley Anderson, had infused me with a great deal of confidence, and I simply wanted to continue writing. Incidentally, my British publishers didn’t care much for Dark Hollow as a title and prevailed upon me to change it. I eventually came up with Requiem for the Damned as an alternative, and some proof copies were made up with that title—they’re quite valuable now—but I hated the title Requiem for the Damned so much that I couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud. So we reverted to Dark Hollow.

From the start, I knew that I had to find a way to write about Belinda Pereira, and the character of Rita Ferris is based, in part, on her. In the book—and I’m not giving too much away here—punishment is meted out to those responsible for Rita’s death and a measure of justice is achieved. But Belinda Pereira’s murder remains unsolved despite repeated pleas for assistance from the Garda, and it now seems unlikely that anyone will be brought to trial for it.

A year or so after Dark Hollow was published, a man got in touch with me via the Internet. He said that he was Belinda Pereira’s cousin. At first I was reluctant to reply to him: only two books in to my career, I had already broken my own rule about not using real cases to power my work, and I had mentioned Belinda in the course of interviews for the novel. As it turned out, her cousin was simply grateful that she had not been forgotten and was glad of any efforts to keep her case in the public eye. He told me that one of the reasons Belinda had come to Dublin was because her parents had separated and her mother wanted to return to Sri Lanka. Belinda saw a week in Dublin, working as a prostitute, as a way to earn some of the money needed to send her mother home. But the circumstances of Belinda’s death followed her mother back to Sri Lanka. There was disgrace, and shame. Her mother contracted cancer and died. That, at least, was the story he told me, and I have no reason to doubt the truth of it.

I sometimes think that one of the reasons we read mystery fiction is because it gives us answers and solutions we don’t get in reality. In real life murderers get away with their crimes. Trials collapse. Witnesses lie, or recant their statements, and the evidence required to convict is no longer available. The law is unsatisfactory, and justice is not always served. Would we read a mystery novel in which no justice was achieved at the end? Probably not. There are some exceptions in the genre—the work of Patricia Highsmith being the most obvious—but I believe most readers don’t want the killer to get away in the end, to see crimes go unpunished and victims rest uneasy and unavenged.

After all, they can find those kinds of stories in their newspapers.

1

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, Dreading to find its Father.

—W. H. Auden, For the Time Being

PROLOGUE

I dream dark dreams.

I dream of a figure moving through the forest, of children flying from his path, of young women crying at his coming. I dream of snow and ice, of bare branches and moon-cast shadows. I dream of dancers floating in the air, stepping lightly even in death, and my own pain is but a faint echo of their suffering as I run. My blood is black on the snow, and the edges of the world are silvered with moonlight. I run into the darkness, and he is waiting.

I dream in black and white, and I dream of him.

I dream of Caleb, who does not exist, and I am afraid.

THE DODGE INTREPID STOOD beneath a stand of firs, its windshield facing out to sea, the lights off, the key in the ignition to keep the heater running. No snow had fallen this far south, not yet, but there was frost on the ground. From nearby came the sound of the waves breaking on Ferry Beach, the only noise to disturb the stillness of this Maine winter night. A floating jetty bobbed close to the shore, lobster pots piled high upon it. Four boats lay shrouded in tarpaulin behind the red wooden boathouse, and a catamaran was tied down close to the public access boat ramp. Otherwise, the parking lot was empty.

The passenger door opened and Chester Nash climbed quickly into the car, his teeth chattering and his long brown coat drawn tightly around him. Chester was small and wiry, with long dark hair and a sliver of a mustache on his upper lip that stretched down beyond the corners of his mouth. He thought the mustache made him look dashing. Everyone else thought it made him look mournful, thus the nickname Cheerful Chester. If there was one thing guaranteed to make Chester Nash mad, it was people calling him Cheerful Chester. He had once stuck his gun in Paulie Block’s mouth for calling him Cheerful Chester. Paulie Block had almost ripped his arm off for doing it, although, as he explained to Cheerful Chester while he slapped him repeatedly across the head with hands as big as shovels, he understood the reason why Chester had done it. Reasons just didn’t excuse everything, that was all.

I hope you washed your hands, said Paulie Block, who sat in the driver’s seat of the Dodge, maybe wondering why Chester couldn’t have taken a leak earlier like any normal individual instead of insisting on pissing against a tree in the woods by the shore and letting all of the heat out of the car while he did it.

Man, it’s cold, said Chester. This is the coldest goddamn place I have ever been in my whole goddamn life. My meat nearly froze out there. Any colder, I’da pissed ice cubes.

Paulie Block took a long drag on his cigarette and watched as the tip flared briefly red before returning to gray ash. Paulie Block was aptly named. He was six-three, weighed two-eighty, and had a face that looked like it had been used to shunt trains. He made the interior of the car look cramped just by being there. All things considered, Paulie Block could have made Giants Stadium look cramped just by being there.

Chester glanced at the digital clock on the dash, the green numerals seeming to hang suspended in the dark.

They’re late, he said.

They’ll be here, said Paulie. They’ll be here.

He returned to his cigarette and stared out to sea. He probably didn’t look too hard. There was nothing to be seen, just blackness and the lights of Old Orchard Beach beyond. Beside him, Chester Nash began playing with a Game Boy.

Outside, the wind blew and the waves washed rhythmically on the beach, and the sound of their voices carried over the cold ground to where others were watching, and listening.

". . . SUBJECT TWO IS back in vehicle. Man, it’s cold," said FBI Special Agent Dale Nutley, unconsciously repeating the words that he had just heard Chester Nash speak. A parabolic microphone stood beside him, positioned close to a small gap in the wall of the boathouse. Next to it, a voice-activated Nagra tape recorder whirred softly and a Badger Mk II low-light camera kept a vigil on the Dodge.

Nutley wore two pairs of socks, long johns, denims, a T-shirt, a cotton shirt, a wool sweater, a Lowe ski jacket, thermal gloves, and a gray alpaca hat with two little flaps that hung down over the headphones and kept his ears warm. Special Agent Rob Briscoe, who sat beside him on a tall stool, thought the alpaca hat made Nutley look like a llama herder, or the lead singer with the Spin Doctors. Either way, Nutley looked like a clown in his alpaca hat, with its damn flaps to keep his ears warm. Agent Briscoe, whose ears were very cold, wanted that alpaca hat. If it got any colder, he figured he might just have to kill Dale Nutley and take the hat from his dead head.

The boathouse stood to the right of the Ferry Beach parking lot, giving its occupants a clear view of the Dodge. Behind it, a private road followed the shore, leading to one of the summer houses below the Neck. From the lot, Ferry Road snaked back to Black Point Road, leading ultimately to Oak Hill and U.S. 1 to the north and the Neck to the southeast. The boathouse windows had received a reflective coating barely two hours before, in order to prevent anyone from seeing the agents inside. There had been a brief moment of apprehension when Chester Nash had peered in the window and tested the locks on the doors before running quickly back to the Dodge.

Unfortunately, the boathouse had no heating, at least none that worked, and the FBI had not seen fit to provide the two special agents with a heater. As a result, Nutley and Briscoe were about as cold as they had ever been. The bare boards of the boathouse were icy to the touch.

How long we been here? asked Nutley.

Two hours, replied Briscoe.

You cold?

What sort of a stupid question is that? I’m covered in frost. Of course I’m fucking cold.

Why didn’t you bring a hat? asked Nutley. You know, you lose most of your body heat through the top of your head? You should have brought a hat. That’s why you’re cold. You should have brought a hat.

You know what, Nutley? said Briscoe.

What? said Nutley.

I hate you.

Behind them, the Nagra whirred softly, recording the conversation of the two agents. Everything was to be recorded. That was the rule on this operation: everything. And if that included Briscoe’s hatred of Nutley because of his alpaca hat, then so be it.

THE SECURITY GUARD, OLIVER Judd, heard her before he saw her. Her feet made a heavy, shuffling noise on the carpeted floor and she was speaking softly to herself as she walked. Regretfully, he stood up in his booth and walked away from his TV and the heater that had been blasting warm air onto his toes. Outside, there was a kind of stillness that presaged further snow. There was no wind, though, which was something. It would soon get worse—December always did—but, this far north, it got worse sooner than it did anywhere else. Sometimes, living in northern Maine could be a bitch.

He walked swiftly toward her. Hey, lady, lady! What are you doing out of bed? You’re gonna catch your death.

The woman started at the last word and looked at Judd for the first time. She was small and thin but carried herself straight, which gave her an imposing air among the other occupants of St. Martha’s Home for the Elderly. Judd didn’t think she was as old as some of the other folks in the home, who were so ancient that they’d bummed cigarettes from people who were later killed in World War I. This one, though, was maybe sixty at most. Judd figured that if she wasn’t old then she was probably infirm, which meant, in layman’s terms, that she was mad, plumb loco. Her hair was silver gray and hung loose over her shoulders and almost to her waist. Her eyes were bright blue and looked straight through Judd and off into the distance. She wore a pair of brown, lace-up boots, a nightgown, a red muffler, and a long blue overcoat, which she was buttoning as she walked.

I’m leaving, she replied. She spoke quietly but with absolute determination, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary that a sixty-year-old woman should try to leave a home for the elderly in northern Maine wearing only a nightdress and a cheap coat on a night when the forecast promised more snow to add to the six inches that already lay frozen on the ground. Judd couldn’t figure out how she had slipped past the nurses’ station, still less almost to the main door of the building. Some of these old folks were cunning as foxes, Judd reckoned. Turn your back on them and they’d be gone, heading for the hills or their former homes or off to wed a lover who had died thirty years before.

Now you know you can’t leave, said Judd. Come on, you got to go back to bed. I’m going to call for a nurse now, so you stay where you are and we’ll have someone down to take care of you before you know it.

The woman stopped buttoning her coat and looked again at Oliver Judd. It was then that Judd realized for the first time that she was scared: truly, mortally afraid for her life. He couldn’t tell how he knew, except that maybe some kind of primitive sense had kicked in when she came near him. Her eyes were huge and pleading and her hands shook now that they were no longer occupied with her buttons. She was so scared that Judd began to feel a little nervous himself. Then the woman spoke.

He’s coming, she said.

Who’s coming? asked Judd.

Caleb. Caleb Kyle is coming.

The woman’s stare was almost hypnotic, her voice trembling with terror. Judd shook his head and took her by the arm.

Come on, he said, leading her to a vinyl seat beside his booth. You sit down here while I call the nurse. Who in hell was Caleb Kyle? The name was almost familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

He was dialing the number for the nurses’ station when he heard a noise from behind. He turned to see the woman almost on top of him, her eyes now narrow with concentration, her mouth set firmly. Her hands were raised above her head and he lifted his gaze to see what she was holding, his face rising just in time to see the heavy glass vase falling toward him.

Then all was darkness.

"I CAN’T SEE A fucking thing," said Cheerful Chester Nash. The windows of the car had steamed up, giving Chester an uncomfortably claustrophobic feeling that the huge bulk of Paulie Block did nothing to ease, as he had just told his companion in no uncertain terms.

Paulie leaned across Chester and wiped the side window with his sleeve. In the distance, headlights raked the sky.

Quiet, he said. They’re coming.

NUTLEY AND BRISCOE HAD also seen the headlights, minutes after Briscoe’s radio had crackled into life to inform the agents that a car was on its way down Old County Road, heading in the direction of Ferry Beach.

You think it’s them? asked Nutley.

Maybe, replied Briscoe, brushing icy condensation from his jacket as the Ford Taurus emerged from Ferry Road and pulled up alongside the Dodge. Through their phones, the agents heard Paulie Block ask Cheerful Chester if he was ready to rumble. They heard only a click in response. Briscoe couldn’t be certain, but he thought it was the sound of a safety clicking off.

IN ST. MARTHA’S HOME for the Elderly, a nurse placed a cold compress on the side of Oliver Judd’s head. Ressler, the sergeant out of Dark Hollow, stood by with a reserve patrolman, who was still laughing quietly to himself. There was the faintest trace of a fading smile on Ressler’s lips. In another corner stood Dave Martel, the chief of police in Greenville, five miles south of Dark Hollow, and beside him one of the Fisheries and Wildlife wardens from the town.

St. Martha’s was technically in the jurisdiction of Dark Hollow, the last town before the big industrial forests began their sweep toward Canada. Still, Martel had heard about the woman and had come to offer his help in the search if it was needed. He didn’t like Ressler, but liking had nothing to do with whatever action needed to be taken.

Martel, who was sharp, quiet, and only Greenville’s third chief since the foundation of the town’s small department, didn’t see anything particularly funny about what had just happened. If they didn’t find her soon, she would die. It didn’t require too much cold to kill a sixty-year-old woman, and there was plenty to spare that night.

Oliver Judd, who had always wanted to be a cop but was too short, too overweight, and too dumb to make the grade, knew the Dark Hollow cops were laughing at him. He figured that they probably had a right to laugh. After all, what kind of security guard gets coldcocked by an old lady? An old lady, what’s more, who now had Oliver Judd’s new Smith & Wesson 625 somewhere on her person.

The search team prepared to move off, headed by Dr. Martin Ryley, the director of the home. Ryley was wrapped up tightly in a hooded parka, gloves, and insulated boots. In one hand he carried an emergency medical kit, in the other a big Maglite flashlight. At his feet lay a backpack containing warm clothing, blankets, and a thermos filled with soup.

We didn’t pass her on the way in here, so she’s moving across country, Judd heard someone say. It sounded like Will Patterson, the warden, whose wife worked in a drugstore in Guilford and had an ass like a peach waiting to be bitten.

It’s all hard going, said Ryley. South is Beaver Cove, but Chief Martel didn’t see her on his way up here. West is the lake. Looks like she may be just wandering aimlessly through the woods.

Patterson’s radio buzzed and he moved away to talk. Almost immediately, he turned back. Plane’s spotted her. She’s about one mile northeast of here, moving farther into the forest.

The two Dark Hollow cops and the warden, accompanied by Ryley and a nurse, moved off, one of the cops shouldering the backpack of clothing and blankets. Chief Martel looked at Judd and shrugged. Ressler didn’t want his help, and Martel wasn’t about to stick his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, but he had a bad feeling about what was happening, a very bad feeling. As he watched the group of five heading into the trees, the first small flurries of snow began to fall.

HO CHI MINH, SAID Cheerful Chester. Pol Pot. Lychee. The four Cambodians looked at him coldly. They wore matching blue wool overcoats, blue suits with somber ties, and black leather gloves on their hands. Three were young, probably no more than twenty-five or twenty-six, Paulie reckoned. The other was older, with strands of gray seeping through his slicked-back dark hair. He wore glasses and smoked an unfiltered cigarette. In his left hand, he held a black leather briefcase.

Tet. Chairman Mao. Nagasaki, continued Cheerful Chester.

Will you shut up? said Paulie Block.

I’m trying to make them feel at home.

The senior Cambodian took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it toward the beach.

When your friend is finished making a fool of himself, perhaps we can begin? he said.

See, said Paulie Block to Cheerful Chester. That’s how wars start.

"THAT CHESTER SURE IS an asshole, said Nutley. The conversation between the six men carried clearly to them in the chill night air. Briscoe nodded in agreement. Beside him, Nutley adjusted the camera to zoom in on the case in the Cambodian’s hand, clicked off a frame, then pulled back a little to take in Paulie Block, the Cambodian, and the case. Their brief was to watch, listen, and record. No interference. The interference part would come later, as soon as all of this—whatever this" was, since all they had was the meeting point—could be traced back to Tony Celli in Boston. Two cars were waiting to pick up the Dodge at Oak Hill, while a third was positioned behind the Scarborough fire department in case either of the targets took the Spurwink Road to South Portland. A second pair of cars would follow the Cambodians. In addition, there was backup available from the police at both Scarborough and Portland, if required. Still, it was Nutley and Briscoe on point, and they knew it.

Briscoe picked up a Night Hawk scope and trained it on Cheerful Chester Nash.

You see anything unusual about Chester’s coat? he said.

Nutley moved the camera a little to the left.

No, he said. Wait. It looks like it’s fifty years old. He doesn’t have his hands in his pockets. He’s got them in those slits below the breast. Pretty awkward way to keep warm, don’t you think?

Yeah, said Briscoe. Real awkward.

WHERE IS SHE? SAID the Cambodian to Paulie Block.

Paulie gestured to the trunk of the car. The Cambodian nodded and handed the briefcase to one of his associates. The case was flicked open and the Cambodian held it, facing forward, so that Paulie and Chester could see what was inside.

Chester whistled. Shit, he said.

SHIT, SAID NUTLEY. "THERE’S a lot of cash in that case."

Briscoe trained the scope on the notes. Ouch. We’re talking maybe two mil.

Enough to buy Tony Celli out of whatever jam he’s in, said Nutley.

And then some.

But who’s in the trunk? asked Nutley.

Well, son, that’s what we’re here to find out.

THE GROUP OF FIVE moved carefully over the hard ground, their breath puffing white as they went. Around them, the tips of evergreens scraped the sky and welcomed the flakes with their spread branches. The ground here was rocky, and the new snow had made it slick and dangerous. Ryley had already stumbled once, painfully scraping his shin. In the sky above them, they could hear the sound of the Cessna’s engine, one of Currier’s planes from Moosehead Lake, and could see its spotlight picking out something on the ground ahead of them.

If this snow keeps up, the plane’s going to have to turn back, said Patterson.

Nearly there, said Ryley. Another ten minutes and we’ll have her.

A gunshot exploded in the darkness ahead of them, then a second. The light on the plane tilted and started to rise. Patterson’s radio burst out with an angry blast of speech.

Hell, said Patterson, with a look of disbelief on his face. She’s shooting at them.

THE CAMBODIAN STAYED CLOSE to Paulie Block as he moved to the rear of the car. Behind them, the younger men pulled back their coats to reveal Uzis hanging from straps on their shoulders. Each kept a hand on the grip, one finger just outside the trigger guard.

Open it, said the older man.

You’re the boss, said Paulie, as he inserted the key in the lock and prepared to lift the trunk. Paulie’s just here to open the trunk. If the Cambodian had been listening more intently, he would have noticed that Paulie Block said the words very loudly and very distinctly.

GUN SLITS, SAID BRISCOE suddenly. Fucking gun slits, that’s what they are.

Gun slits, repeated Nutley. Oh, Jesus.

PAULIE BLOCK OPENED THE trunk and stepped back. A blast of heat greeted the Cambodian as he moved forward. In the trunk was a blanket, and beneath it was a recognizably human form. The Cambodian leaned in and pulled the blanket back.

Beneath it was a man: a man with a sawed-off shotgun.

What is this? said the Cambodian.

This is good-bye, said Paulie Block, as the barrels roared and the Cambodian jerked with the impact of the shots.

FUCK, SAID BRISCOE. "MOVE! Move!" He drew his SIG and ran for the back door, flipping a switch on his handset and calling for the Scarborough backup to move in as he opened the lock and headed into the night in the direction of the two cars.

What about noninterference? said Nutley as he followed the older man. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this at all.

CHEERFUL CHESTER’S COAT FLEW open, revealing the twin short barrels of a pair of Walther MPK submachine guns. Two of the Cambodians were already raising their Uzis when he pulled the triggers.

Sayonara, said Chester, his mouth widening into a grin.

The 9mm parabellums ripped into the three men, tearing through the leather of the briefcase, the expensive wool of their coats, the pristine whiteness of their shirts, the thin shells of their skins. They shattered glass, pierced the metal of the car, pockmarked the vinyl of the seats. It took less than four seconds to empty sixty-four rounds into the three men, leaving them wrinkled and slumped, their warm blood melting the thin layer of frost on the ground. The briefcase had landed face down, some of the tightly packed wads scattering as it fell.

Chester and Paulie saw what they had done, and it was good.

Well, what are you waiting for? said Paulie. Let’s get the money and get the fuck out of here.

Behind him, the man with the shotgun, whose name was Jimmy Fribb, climbed from the cramped trunk and stretched his legs, his joints creaking. Chester loaded a fresh clip into one of the MPKs and dumped the other in the trunk of the Dodge. He was just leaning down to pick up the fallen money when the two shouts came almost together.

FBI, said the first voice. "Let me see your hands. Now."

The other voice was less succinct, and less polite, but probably strangely familiar to Paulie Block.

Get the fuck away from the money, it said, or I’ll blow your fucking heads off.

THE WOMAN STOOD IN a patch of clear ground, watching the sky. Snow fell on her hair, on her shoulders, and on her outstretched arms, the gun clasped in her right hand, her left hand open and empty. Her mouth was gaping and her chest heaved as her aging body tried to cope with its exertions. She seemed not to notice Ryley and the others until they were only thirty feet from her. The nurse hung back behind the others. Ryley, despite Patterson’s objections, took the lead.

Miss Emily, he said softly. Miss Emily, it’s me, Dr. Ryley. We’re here to take you home.

The woman looked at him and Ryley suspected, for the first time since they had set out, that Miss Emily was not mad. Her eyes were calm as she watched him, and she almost grinned as he approached.

I’m not going back, she said.

Miss Emily, it’s cold. You’re going to die out here if you don’t come with us. We’ve brought you blankets and warm clothes, and I have a thermos of chicken soup. We’ll get you warm and comfortable, then we’ll bring you safely back.

The woman actually smiled then, a broad smile with no humor to it, and no trust.

You can’t keep me safe, she said softly. Not from him.

Ryley frowned. He recalled something about the woman now, an incident with a visitor and a later report from one of the nurses after Miss Emily claimed that someone had tried to climb in her window. They’d dismissed it, of course, although Judd had taken to wearing his gun on duty as a result. These old folks were nervous, fearful of illness, of strangers, of friends and relatives sometimes, fearful of the cold, of the possibility of falling, fearful for their meager possessions, for their photos, for their fading memories.

Fearful of death.

Please, Miss Emily, put the gun down and come back with us. We can keep you safe from harm. No one’s going to hurt you.

She shook her head slowly. Above them, the plane circled, casting a strange white light over her frame, turning her long gray hair to silver fire.

I’m not going back. I’ll face him out here. This is his place, these woods. This is where he’ll be.

Her face changed then. Behind Ryley, Patterson thought he had never seen an expression of such abject terror. Her mouth curled down at the edges, her chin and lips trembled and then the rest of her body began to shake, a strange, violent quivering that was almost like an ecstasy. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she started to speak.

I’m sorry, she said. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .

Please, Miss Emily, said Ryley, as he moved toward her. Put the gun down. We have to take you back.

I’m not going back, she repeated.

Please, Miss Emily, you must.

Then you’ll have to kill me, she said simply, as she pointed the Smith & Wesson at Ryley and pulled the trigger.

CHESTER AND PAULIE LOOKED first to their left and then to their right. To their left, in the parking lot, stood a tall man in a black jacket with a handset in one hand and a SIG held before him in the other. Behind him stood another, younger man, also holding a SIG, this time in a two-handed grip, with a gray alpaca hat on his head and flaps hanging down over his ears.

To their right, beside a small wooden hut used to collect parking fees during the summer, stood a figure dressed entirely in black, from the tips of his boots to the ski mask covering his head. He held a Ruger pump-action in his hands and he breathed heavily through the round slit in the mask.

Cover him, said Briscoe to Nutley. Nutley’s SIG shifted from Paulie Block to the black-garbed figure near the edge of the woods.

Drop it, asshole, said Nutley.

The Ruger wavered slightly.

I said, ‘Drop it,’ repeated Nutley, his voice rising to a shout.

Briscoe’s eyes moved briefly to take in the figure with the shotgun. It was all Chester Nash needed. He spun and opened fire with the MPK, hitting Briscoe in the arm and Nutley in the chest and head. Nutley died instantly, his alpaca hat turning red as he fell.

Briscoe opened fire from where he lay on the road, hitting Chester Nash in the right leg and the groin, the MPK tumbling from his hands as he fell. From the woods came the sound of the Ruger opening up and Paulie Block, his gun in his right hand, bucked as he was hit, the windshield behind him shattering as the shots exited. He slumped to his knees and then fell face down on the ground. Chester Nash tried to reach for the MPK with his right hand, his left hand clasping his injured groin, when Briscoe fired two more shots into him and he ceased moving. Jimmy Fribb dropped his shotgun and raised his hands, just in time to stop Briscoe from killing him.

Briscoe was about to rise when, from in front of him, he heard the sound of a shotgun shell being jacked.

Stay down, said the voice.

He did as he was told, placing the SIG on the ground beside him. A black-booted foot kicked the gun away, sending it spinning into the undergrowth.

Put your hands on your head.

Briscoe lifted his hands, his left arm aching as he did so, and watched as the masked figure moved toward him, the Ruger still pointing down. Nutley lay on his back close by, his open eyes staring out at the sea. Christ, thought Briscoe, what a mess. Beyond the trees, he could see headlights and hear the sound of approaching cars. The man with the shotgun heard them too, his head twisting slightly as he placed the last of the cash in the briefcase and closed it. Jimmy Fribb used the distraction to make a lunge for the discarded SIG but the gunman killed him before he could reach it, firing a shot into his back. Briscoe tightened his grip on his head, his injured arm aching, and started to pray.

Stay flat on the ground and don’t look up, he was told.

Briscoe did as he was told, but kept his eyes open. Blood flowed on the ground beside him and he moved his head slightly to avoid it. When he looked up again, there were headlights in his eyes and the figure in black was gone.

DR. MARTIN RYLEY WAS forty-eight and was anxious to see forty-nine. He had two children, a boy and a girl, and a wife called Joanie who cooked him pot roast on Sundays. He wasn’t a very good doctor, which was why he ran an old folks’ home. When Miss Emily Watts fired at